Hospitality

The Odyssey mirrors the concept of hospitality throughout the “adventures of Odysseus, as well as the people, nymphs, gods, and creatures he meets.  Whether it be King Menelaus, or the princess or Odysseus himself, everyone is seen as hospitable to strangers. Upon further study into this and discussions in class, I learned that being hospitable to strangers was a customary norm in Ancient Greece, and this norm was so important that it was thought to be maintained by Zeus himself. This is why we see hosts in the Odyssey referring to strangers as Zeus (sure, Odysseus does appear like a god, but it’s not just that he looks good, just the idea that he is a traveler). You were suppose to treat every stranger as a hospitable as possible, because you never know, it could be a god (as we often see in the Odyssey).

But of course there are problems with this system as well. While some guests might overuse this system (like the suitors, which I talk about below), some hosts might overuse this system as well, as seen in the case of Telemachus and Nestor. Upon encountering Nestor, Telemachus found himself with an overabundance of hostility, with Nestor really liking the guy (so he constantly tells him stories and entertains him, which Telemachus isn’t really interested in, but he can’t deny it either). Keeping the idea of overabundance of hospitality, Odysseus begins to question the people who are being hospitable to them-- are they being hospitable because they are nice people or because they are afraid of the gods and the idea of Xenia?

There are limits as well, when the guests overuse this system. This can be seen with the suitors. The suitors have crossed the line of just being guests. I said in class a few days back that the suitors crossed their limits when the plotted against Telemachus (in book 4..?), but when I go back to think about it now, I feel that they crossed their limits by just staying in the palace of someone else for over TWENTY YEARS! But of course, they do get their heads bashed out in the end, just like they deserved.    

The not so hidden catalyst of the Odyssey: Athena

After the presentations on the “Wandering”, it seems that Athena has really struck out as a character-- so much so, that I think she is possibly the main character of the book. Ok, yeah, she isn’t the main (rolling my eyes) character, but she is responsible for Odysseus being the main character. Athena is the core of the Odyssey because nearly every act, everything that goes on, is performed through Athena’s lens. We first see her when she meets Telemachus. She comes to Odysseus’ palace disguised as mentor, advising Telemachus to journey to Sparta and Pylos, to both find information about his father, as well as continue the “legacy” of his father (specifically, being able to stand up to his reputation by having his own little “Odyssey”). While Telemachus doesn’t find much information at the end of his journey, he does return home as a man, a true prince, who is capable of his handling his kingdom in his own hands, in the unforeseen future. Before that, when Telemachus has to set out on his journey, it is Athena who sets him up with a ship. She also tells Penelope, who is really worried about her son, in a dream that Telemachus will make it back alive and rejuvenated. And this is just in the Telemachiad.

Athena also convinces the Phaeacian princess to help out Odysseus; she helps him get off of Calypso’s island; she also helps him get to Phoenicians; she tells him when he is back in Ithaca; she “advises” Telemachus to come back to Ithaca; she orchestrates Odysseus and Telemachus in such a manner that they both meet outside the palace in a hut (who just happens to belong to an extremely loyal servant); she makes the plan to get suitors’ brains dashed out; she changes the appearance of characters (and the city of Ithaca itself) nearly everytime we meet her. She just doesn’t bug off- I did a quick search on my ebook, and Athena appears 162 times! So what does this mean, and what is the importance of Athena reappearing in the book so many times?

Athena, as stated before, is the core to this epic, kind of like Lord Krishna in the Indian epic, The Mahabharata. Athena serves as the ingredient to the recipe of a cake. Sure, cake’s really good, but in order to have this cake, you must first have all the necessary ingredients in place. This epic is not about the return of the brave Odysseus-- it is rather the result of Athena playing a game which amuses her. The people and creatures associated are but puppets.  

September 5th, 2014

What is a "hero?" What is the hero's "journey?" How about an antihero?

So, what is a hero? Is Barack Hussein Obama a hero? Is Osama bin Laden a hero? To me, a hero is anyone who is doing something unique. A while back, whenever I heard "hero", my immediate thought was of a superhero like Batman or Superman (sorry Marvel fans). I thought of the good guys as the heroes. Many people associate a hero to be a person or a group of people that would risk their lives for the greater good. But I don't think that that is a true hero (not anymore, at least). I think that everyone that is a bystander, just witnessing something happen and not doing anything relating to that or affecting it, is not a hero. However, it is once you do something that you are a hero. Some heroes are bigger than others, because what they did had more importance or relevance. But, every time that something is done by someone, that someone is a hero. For example, when I will have finished this majestic piece of art I call a blogpost, I will be a hero (in my own small way for accomplishing this task). But my main point of the day is not the definition of "hero" but the connotation which is placed into it. When you hear "hero", you automatically think of what a good person he must be. But I am not devoted onto that. I regard a hero as someone who has decided to do something (whether it be challenging or not) and follows up on it-- a person that decides on a journey and embarks on it is a hero. It doesn't matter wether he is able to finish it or not. As long as he does not give up, he is a hero. I even consider a bank robber a hero (the semester project I had for last semester involved a thief as the protagonist of the short story), because the robber is embarking on the journey he set forth. The bank robber is not an antihero. "Antihero", as people understand it, is the villain of the journey (antihero because the villain is not the hero of the story). But that is not what an antihero is, because even the villain is a hero. An antihero is the bystander;  he is that person that's just there doing nothing. An antihero is a person who lacks the heroic attribute of embarking on a journey. In today's geopolitical world, for example, an ISIS soldier is a hero. Maybe not to you as a person, but to me he is. ISIS set out on a journey which seems impossible in today's time period, but executed it quickly and effectively. Therefore, there is a heroic quality to ISIS. I'm not saying that ISIS is the good guy, they're not (I'll clear that up right now), but they are heroes in their own way. In a battle it's the people that win that are the heroes, because they are the ones that write history. In short, you can't say that the good guy is the hero because that would be subjective. You can say however that anybody that embarks on a journey is a hero, because that is not subjective. For example, in India, hero is also the term used to describe the actor of a movie that comes out. You ofter hear: "Oh, who's the hero of that movie?" When they say hero, it's not because he is great or the actor has done some good deed (he probably has, but that doesn't matter), but because that is the commonly used term. So in the end, it is the definition of the word that matters. Hero is interesting because it in itself describes the actions of everybody that have no connection to each other, apart from having the courage to decide to do something, and then actually do it.

Zapruder Film. Yet again.

At the end of class today, there was a question asked by Mary (blogpost at: http://angonokas.blogspot.com/) about the Zapruder film. I don’t remember the exact wordings, but it was somewhere along the lines of “So it seems that everyone is in agreement that the Zapruder film has just brought up more controversies and conspiracies. Does anyone think that it is good that the Zapruder film is there?” Now I know the question wasn’t that but that’s how I interpreted it (haha that’s why I said “somewhere along the lines of..”) and that’s the question I will talk about during this blog. Now I wasn’t able to give a nice smartass response because of lack of time and my mentioning of the Zapruder film on IMDB (more on that below. If you don’t want to ready my awesome zestful points which show why I am right (and y’all are wrong, just kidding lol), then just skip to the bottom, with no zest).

Conspiracy theories. Lots of those, right, over the JFK assassination? Yes, that’s true. But do you think there were none before the Zapruder film? Of course there were. There were eyewitnesses, the Warren Commision. Even when the Warren Commision came out, the majority of people did not think it was the full story, and this was before the introduction of the Zapruder film to the general public. After the introduction of the film, many theories such as the theory of only one bullet, or even more, where the president was hit, and such things were debated. Sure, the Zapruder film is the root of most conspiracy theories nowadays, but it has helped solve some mysteries too. And on the subject of multiple theories: do you expect there to be no theories? Does that ever happen with ANY assassination? And there should be many more theories for this, because there is a reason it is called as the most horrific 26 seconds of the 20th century. Whether it be actually true, or theories simply put out to confuse others ( or blaming other opposition countries etc), it doesn’t mean that the Zapruder film is bad or shouldn’t have been there.

Moreover, keeping aside the conspiracy theories, the Zapruder film is one that shows the assassination of the United States President. Considering that the United States considers itself as an omnipotent power, this comes to a shock of not only the American public, but also the world. Writings and narratives can only show you so much. Even with bad pixelation, no sound, and being really old, it brings the truth. No one, and this is important, says that Frame 313 is fake. No one. Because every single eyewitness remembers that scene vividly. It’s just like 9/11 for people that were alive and paying attention (more on that on Mary’s blog). That brings me to my final point, the one you’ve all been waiting for. IMDB.

For a while I’ve been trying to bring this up in class, but I just didn’t find the right time. So, today, I decided to talk about it. Yes, its true. With a rating of 7.9/10 (anything on IMDB that is 8+ rating is by definition a must watch awesome piece of artwork; that doesn’t mean those below it aren’t, they are also good (obviously, the higher the ranking, the better)) and casting JFK and Jackie Kennedy and winner of the national film registry award, IMDB has some cool facts and trivia attached to the Zapruder film. For example, when watching the Zapruder film, we see Jackie Kennedy jumping on the trunk of the car, and I thought she was doing that for self-protection. IMDB says “When the film was released publicly in 1975 many people assumed that Mrs. Kennedy jumped on the trunk after the shooting because she was frightened and trying to get out of the way. Some years later the secret service that jumped onto the bumper revealed that she was actually trying to retrieve a piece of the president's head that had landed on the back of the car” and  that “Although Abraham Zapruder made a profit from selling the film, he was so disturbed by the nightmare he had filmed that he did not keep a copy. He never owned or used another camera again.” See it for yourself at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131658/.

The last thing I would like to say. Earlier, I posted a post with a video of Jackie Kennedy’s letters from CNN. And now, I came to know, as a subscriber of Time Magazine, that there is going be an issue all on her, releasing on May 30th, 2014, her 20th death anniversary. Lee will probably be mentioned on numerous occasions. Looks like his goal of being in TIME has been once again achieved.  

What A F---ing Coincidence

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Today, in class, we discussed coincidence vs. free will and the importance of coincidence in the jfk assassination plot. I would like to take some time to talk about that now. Many people were in agreement that coincidence plays a big role, but I don't think it does-- it's just being over dramatized. The truth is that coincidence is the word often used by people who are unable to look at the entire picture (thereby ignorant!). Words such as coincidence, synchronicity, (black) magic, sorcery, etc are often used to describe things or events that cannot be explained by human beings through typical conventional science and technology.

Let’s get into the fancy details: the physics definition of coincidence is “The presence of ionizing particles or other objects in two or more detectors simultaneously, or of two or more signals simultaneously in a circuit (OED).” From that, it grew to the conventionally used term of today, where “a remarkable concurrence of [two or more] events or circumstances without apparent causal connection” take place (OED). You can see for yourself how the term grew up. I shall use a multitude of examples to relay my point, and then sum it up in general. If you’re in a hurry stop reading, if not, well what a coincidence, you can keep reading.  Now, imagine that you’re in your living room reading this article and thinking about your favorite TV show. Then you open the television out of boredom and voila, that very TV show is coming on. “What a coincidence,” you must think. The truth is that that TV channel is already on the TV from when you watched it last night, and since it’s a hit TV show they are doing a re-run or something. Whatever the case maybe, its hardly coincidence. But we never stop and think about these things. We open the TV, say “What a coincidence”, and start to enjoy the show after a tiresome day. So what does this tell us? It tells us that coincidence, in general, is rare, like very rare.

Another example: when students have been given monetary indulges towards their grades, as in, rewards for an A and such in schools, those schools’ (Data from Freakonomics, worldwide best selling novel; reputable and factual source) overall student performance has a tremendous jump. Coincidence? No. This is research, fact: incentives attract people.

Ruth Paine, a friend of his family's in Dallas alerted Lee of a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository about a month and a half before the assassination. Coincidence? No, because Lee was a looking for a job (ignoring the Libra plot streamline, for a moment) anyways. Roy Truly, the building superintendent, hired Oswald and assigned him to the fifth and sixth floors of the building. Coincidence? No, because those were the floors that needed someone assigned to. There’s a reason that Ruth Paine and Roy Truly are never considered to be part of the plot. They had no evidence, no relationships, no connections to anyone bad or of even slightly suspectful people but Oswald. JFK’s car conveniently passes by the building Lee works in. Coincidence? No, because JFK’s car passed a whole lot of buildings, not just the one Lee was shooting from (you see, Lee get’s himself caught, it didn’t help that he shot from that window as it didn’t not raise suspicion of Lee shooting from that window. He could have just as well shot from anywhere he wanted by getting into the building as a guest, janitor, or worker of some sort.) The thing is, you can analyse these things from any angle you want-- there is NO coincidence involved. When people can’t explain things right, or want to quickly get their point across, they use the word coincidence, because that just has this psychological effect on us, accepting their narrative, be it true, false, a conspiracy, whatever it may be.

If you think that I am wrong in any way, or you have more things related to coincidence, such as specific scenes or things related to Lee’s life and the JFK assassination, please leave it in the comments below, because I would have lots of fun putting forth my arguments during the summer. Blog comment war anybody?            

Here’s something to crunch over, if you have time for philosophical things. Let's go back to the coconut analogy. When a coconut falls from its tree into the ocean (so the tree lets go of its fruit), then which river it will go in, which land the fruit will be planted on to pulp a new tree (and even if it is lucky enough to survive), is completely dependent on the fruit and its destiny. That was the analogy I had used previously to give a demonstration of what destiny was and now I will attempt to clarify coincidence. When it falls, where it lands and if it breaks (that is, if there is a low tide than it will break, if there is a high tide, then it will land on the water. Or maybe the coconut breaks after hitting the water anyways.) is it coincidence? Or just something that happened? On another note, suppose I just got three yahtzees (anybody still play board games?) in a row (when all five dice have the same face value in one turn=yahtzee). You would probably say “Wow, what a coincidence!” slightly amazed and perplexed (considering that you have a roughly .08% chance of getting a yahtzee, and one in a million, for three yahtzees in a row). Now what if I told you that I have been trying that since the beginning of the day? The week? As the time frame grows, of when I tell you since when I have been trying this, your excited expression would probably turn into a sighing “Oh. Good job,” or “Cool story, bro,” or a combination or something similar.

Assassination Footage of JFK

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

In class, a few days back (was it this week? I forget; nevertheless, whenever it happened) we were shown the Kennedy assassination footage. It was the first time that I was seeing this footage (keep in mind, I had already read Delillo's narrative at this point). From Kennedy’s initial wave to the public, the first shot, and the bloody head shot, everything was so unexpected. I was prepared for to see it, I thought, but I was wrong. Dellio was spot on about the narration. He narrated it exactly like the Zapruder film. Everytime it replayed, I kept rooting for Kennedy to duck down or something and miss getting hit. Every single time, even though I knew nothing could change it, still. Here’s the difference between Delillo’s work: when I was reading Delillo, I wanted Lee to not miss. I was rooting for Lee to get that anti-Castro, and no longer be a bird. And this is the what I hate about the Zapruder film: I’m in no man’s land now. I don’t know who to root for and why (make sure to help me out with that in the comments below guys, if you’re still reading). Video games used to be fun when I got awesome headshots. But when I saw an actual one, it shook me back to reality completely.

Mr. Mitchell mentioned in class the effect of Frame 313 and how it’s the key frame and cause of debate in the conspiracy theories; I totally understand why that Frame was hidden from the public for over a decade after the assasination. That is the scene where the blood from Kennedy’s head comes rushing out, a really horrifying seen. I let out a little gasp, I remember vividly, everytime I saw that Frame-- it just has that aura to it. And Delillo has been trying to build (not even trying, just saying has built would be correct, I think) this aura from the beginning of the book, with the dated and placed chapters (may I add, yes I will, I never knew Lee had traveled so far internationally like that (isn’t that rare for that time period?)).  

Meanwhile and interestingly, in other news, I just came across this CNN video relating to letters from Jackie Kennedy (it’s interesting, I have found stuff relating to the books that we have read all semester in some way on the recent headlines on CNN. Coincedence, or is the damn NSA?

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/05/13/lead-dnt-foreman-jackie-kennedy-letters.cnn.html

John Wilkes Booth

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

In class today, we were talking about conspiracies and I mentioned the Lincoln assassination, so I would like to expand over it now. Most sources and facts prove towards the following: John Wilkes Booth (the killer of Lincoln: fact) was never caught by the U.S. Government. (Now I would like to take this time to apologize: Mr. Mitchell said in class “This is a theory, right”, and I think I said “No, it’s factua…--”. Ok, so its not a fact, because for it to be a fact, there needs to be no speculation. But, the “fact” that John Wilkes Booth was executed by the U.S. Government, as it says, is also not a fact, because all the evidence that is present, points towards the fact that it is not a fact, in fact.)

Let me start out with the most obvious claim, that everybody who believes this “theory” (come on, it’s fact) uses. There have been many attempts by various groups of people, including the newschannel History.com , the Smithsonian Institute , even the Booth family to use modern technology to figure out the truth. The method: to exhume the body of John W. Booth or to use artifacts which Booth used to obtain DNA samples, by which they can solve the mystery in a second (they will solve the mystery because they can compare the person that the U.S. Government shot with John Wilkes Booth’s brother, and if they match, then the U.S. Government caught the right guy. If they don’t, well then you know.).  The problem: they have to obtain permission from the U.S. Government to do this. Every single court case that has been put up has been denied. Even the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland (where remains of Edwin Booth, his brother, and John Booth exist) denied the Booth family’s request. The question on everyone’s mind is ‘why is the U.S. Government not wanting anybody to look into this? Are they afraid that they killed the wrong guy? Or are they afraid, that the people will discover that the U.S. Government lied to them, that the U.S. Government knew that they killed the wrong guy?’ Do you know the irony between Edwin Booth and Lincoln? Edwin Booth actually saved Lincoln’s son Robert’s life, unknowingly albeit. But when he got to know, he was proud, as state many recounts. And ironically, his brother, a few months later, killed Lincoln. But that’s another story altogether.

So what was John Wilkes Booth’s identity afterwards, you must ask, and when did he die? His identity was John St. Helen, who committed suicide in 1903, 38 years after the assassination of Lincoln. I won’t go into much detail, but let me explain to you why I say so. A comparison in photos of the two people show striking resemblance. Moreover, in 1931, six physicians in Chicago examined the body of John St. Helen and described that Helen had a broken left leg, a scared eyebrow, and a crushed right thumb-- all these rare characteristics, Booth had too, and that is a real fact.

Here is a link, which rightfully gets at this point. It observes all the angles. Read it, and read on other articles. Remember, the U.S. Government has a long, very long, history of being corrupt and lying to its people. Think about it yourself. And then, leave a comment below and tell me what you think. Mr. Mitchell asked this question in class about the Kennedy assassination. Do you think that what the Government has provided us is the reality? Or is there more to it then that? Or are you in the IDK area?